The Colin McEnroe Show

Weekdays at 1:00 pm and 8:00 pm

Note: Rather than try to explain the show ourselves, we’re asking the people who listen to describe what it sounds like to them. Josh Dobbin, our unofficial ombudsman and possibly most prolific commenter, is taking the first crack. Here’s Josh:

“The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately.”Thomas Paine

The Colin McEnroe Show endeavors to prove Paine correct, every weekday. While the topics are unpredictable from one day to the next (previous show topics include whistling, placebos, politics, the nature of divinity, Barbra Streisand, bedbugs, human hydration, dinosaurs, unreliable narrators, ugliness, and raccoons), what is always assured is that a thoughtful, smart, and interesting exploration and conversation with amazing guests will take place about something.

Colin McEnroe is an author, playwright, professor, columnist, and blogger, who is allergic to penicillin and enjoys photographing his dog wearing hats and publishing those photos to the internet. He heads up a team that includes three inquisitive producers (see below) plus the comedy performers Chion Wolf and Greg Hill, who double as the show’s technical producer and tweetmaster respectively.

Ways to Connect

There is, of course, nothing to do in Connecticut in the summer, except that tonight, for example, I face a hard choice between one of today's guests, Meklit Hadero, at Real Art Ways or the soulful and talented singer Liam O Maonlai of the Hothouse flowers at 41 Bridge Street in Collinsville.

On Thursday the fabulously talented Hartford artist Barbara Hocker opens a show at 100 Pearl Street in Hartford. Down in Middletown, ArtFarm, one of several Connecticut outdoor Shakespeare troupes, has a high speed mashup osf the bard's comedies up and running.

New York magazine's often caustic Will Leitch thinks we should feel sorry for "umpires — lonely, underpaid men who spend their whole adult lives on the road, being called horrible names by strangers — are our sacrifice, roasted on a spit as we pray to the instant-replay gods. We understand that outrage is building so that its momentum will bring us the robot umps we all want and deserve. But you still feel bad for the men in blue who find a new reason to be screamed at every night."

Bill Curry says there should be a National "Bring Your Whole Self to Politics" day in which political people reveal all the complicated sides they have that don't fit into the stark equations that make one a liberal or a conservative, a Republican or a Democrat.

Back in the days of three, maybe four, networks, summer television was an odd wasteland, mostly re-runs with occasionally odd oases. Ray Stevens hosted a summer replacement series which offered the first full exposure to the dadaist comedy of a young unknown named Steve Martin.

OK, I know this might not be as easy and fun as yesterday's show on comic books, but if the current state budget were a comic book, it would be about a dystopian future. (And present for that matter ...)

The state constitution requires that the budget be balanced by Friday. It isn't. The plan for doing that included significant givebacks by the state employees. They wouldn't do it.

Today, the Supreme Court struck down an Arizona public financing law similar to the one in Connecticut. But campaign finance reform can be a little dry and hard to follow, so first, a little colorful history:

Early in the career of Cassius Clay, a boxing writer saw him fight a lesser opponent and said it looked like a man trying to kill hornets with a shovel. That's not a bad description of the efforts to combat electronic spam.

Last year, Patrick Skahill and I arrived on one of the first days of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas and attended, if that's the right word, "Susurrus," a play that unfolded in our heads as we walked though New Haven's Edgerton Park listening to the drama unfold on headphones.

For me, the champion of the nom de plume game will forever be Brian O'Nolan who wrote great modernist novels under the name Flann O'Brien and an important newspaper column in the Irish times under the pen name Miles nagCopaleen. (Miles of the Little Ponies.)

The story is familiar from the work of Charles Dickens. A young person with little means is placed under the care of a family member who in turns sells or trades the young person to a man who is up to no good.

Thirty-four states use the death penalty. Sixteen do not. Connecticut does, but most of its neighboring states -- New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont -- do not. New Hampshire does, but the state has had no executions since 1939 and currently possesses no means of executing anyone. Only recently did the ranks of its death row swell to one.

Thirty-four states use the death penalty. Sixteen do not. Connecticut does, but most of its neighboring states -- New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont -- do not. New Hampshire does, but the state has had no executions since 1939 and currently possesses no means of executing anyone. Only recently did the ranks of its death row swell to one.

This week a feud erupted between Hartford courant columnist and blogger Rick Green and Frank Harris, a Courant columnist and chairman of the journalism department at Southern Connecticut State University.

This week a feud erupted between Hartford Courant columnist and blogger Rick Green and Frank Harris, a Courant columnist and chairman of the journalism department at Southern Connecticut State University.

We got interested in whistling after the Library of Congress launched its National Jukebox, an amazing online compilation of playable, often scratchy music from the library's collection. There's a lot of music there, including a whole section devoted to whistling. (Also yodeling, but that's another show ... )